Heretofore, skirt board devices have involved arrangements which because of rapid wear by the moving conveyor belt, necessitated frequent replacement, or constant adjustment which, with the arrangements used, was difficult and because of the continuous wear on the devices it was impossible to maintain an effective and continuous seal between the skirt boards and the moving belt.
It has been the general practice to utilize skirt boarding on conveyors to provide a seal between the moving conveyor belt and the stationary bin, or chute, where material is discharged onto the belt. This particular point is very important to seal because it is here that a great percentage of the dirt encountered throughout a plant finds its source. Material escaping from the conveyor at this loading point becomes scattered throughout the plant and represents a loss of the material conveyed.
Prior skirt boards were constructed from resilient material, such as rubber or the like, and were mounted on the conveyor housing by some means which afforded manual adjustment, in an effort to mate the board with the conveyor belt in some such manner as might form an adequate sealing relationship. The seal was extremely difficult to maintain because of the wear resulting from the abrasion by the constantly traveling conveyor belt and which made the frequent adjustments required, almost impossible for maintenance personnel in the plant to cope with and unless the adjustment was attended to at regular intervals it was not possible to prevent the material from escaping from the conveyor system.
Conventional skirt board installations heretofore have provided arrangements where it was possible to adjust the skirt boards to obtain a sealing engagement with the conveyor belt but generally, these prior skirt boards were bolted in place and it became a major operation to perform the adjustments. The system had to be completely shutdown, the bolts loosened, the skirt boards adjusted and then the bolts retightened and each time an adjustment was required these same steps became necessary to perform and if any resemblance of an effective seal was attempted to be maintained the operation had to be repeated quite frequently.